The Ecobee line of thermostats have a neat feature that can use the local weather information to determine the best way to heat or cool your house. If the weather isn’t currently set up on your Ecobee thermostat, here’s how to set the location so that it can begin optimizing your HVAC system.

Not only is having the weather info accessible on the Ecobee efficient for your heating and cooling, but you can also see how the outside temperature affects the usage of your HVAC system. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to be able to quickly look at your thermostat to see what the weather’s like outside without having to open up a weather app on your phone.

To begin, you’ll actually need to log into your Ecobee account in the web browser, since the Ecobee app doesn’t allow you access these settings. Start by going to Ecobee’s website and clicking on “Login” at the top.

Enter in your username (which will be your email address) and password, and then click “Sign In”.

Click on “Settings”.

Select “Location” on the left-hand side.

From here, you can enter in your address, city, country, and zip code, but if you want, you can just enter in your city and zip code if you don’t want to provide your exact address. Click “Save” when you’re done.

After that, you can close out of the window by hitting the “X” button in the upper-right corner.

Next, tap on “Home IQ”.

Click on the white arrow next to “System Monitor” at the bottom.

Here you can see when your heating or cooling has been turned on and how long it’s been on for, as well as see what the indoor temperature was at any point in time. And now that you have weather info activated, the green line shows what the outside temperature was at that point in time, giving you an idea of how the weather affected your HVAC system as far as when it turned on and off throughout the day and night.

Furthermore, weather info will now appear on your thermostat, as well as in the Ecobee app.

You can view a more detailed weather report either on the thermostat or in the app with a couple of taps, but this likely won’t replace your favorite weather app anytime soon. It’s mostly useful for the thermostat’s own good, as well as to look at the system monitor to see how the weather affects your heating and cooling cycles.